


Prompt: Ace of Swords

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [122]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Penny Dreadful (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Penny Dreadful Fusion, Codependency, Crossover, Gen, Tarot, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-30 02:23:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10867038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: He does not know where he is. He does not know what he is. He knows what he needs, though, and it is not the blood offered to him, or the protection from sunlight the others seek. It is something that has been blocked out of his mind, even as he seeks it.He hungers though. He hungers so much, for blood, for darkness,for his sistersomething whispers in the recesses of his mind.He licks his lips, his new-sharp teeth. Maybe her blood would sate him.





	Prompt: Ace of Swords

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nanyoky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nanyoky/gifts).



> Written for a prompt readable on my tumblr [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/160493486025/fic-prompt-avengers-penny-dreadful-au-possible). For an idea of the kind of thing Wanda would be wearing in this look [Here](http://gothiccharmschool.tumblr.com/post/160559581940/herminehesse-reception-gown-jane-e-turner). Because Tarot is a bit of a thing in Penny Dreadful, I did a reading before I started this fic, and that did affect how I wrote this, as seen by section titles.
> 
>  **Characters Map As:** Wanda = Vanessa, Pietro = Mina, Clint = Malcom Murray, Steve = Dorian, but nice, Tony = Victor, Bruce/Hulk = Jekyll/Hyde, Ultron = Caliban, Vision = Proteus/Lily/Brona, Thor = Ethan, Natasha = Catriona/Poe's Lenore.
> 
>  **Cards Map As:** Justice = Wanda, Queen of Cups = Vision, Four of Pentacles = Pietro, Six of Pentacles = Bruce and/or Tony, Hermit = Natasha, Page of Swords = Clint, Ace of Swords = Climax.

**i. Justice.**  
_My brother was my shield,_  Wanda thinks, laying out her cards. Her brother isn’t there any more. Sometimes she can convince herself he is there, the ghostly presence at her shoulder, but he isn’t. He was taken. He is gone. She can hope to find him, seek him out, but it may not be her brother there when she finds him.

She shares a bond with Pietro even now. She knows there are others like her, other mediums who are afeared of human contact, who dare not share even friendship with others lest it taint their bond with their gifts. Those who go half mad, taunted by spirits when they give into that need for human contact. 

Wanda has never had this problem before. She has always had Pietro to rely on, to embrace and trust and love.

Now he is not here, now he is not at her side, it is _now_  she feels the pull to madness.

Wanda steels herself. Wanda turns the first card.

 

* * *

 

 **ii. Queen of Cups**  
He wakes and he does not know where he is. He does not know what he is. He barely knows that he is.

Something touches him. He knows this because he feels it and he twitches back.

“Hey.” It is a sound. “Hey.” There is something soothing in it. “Look at me. Do you understand me?”

More sounds. He turns and tries to see. 

“Hey.” The sounds come again. There is something in front of him now, a pattern. When the slit opens the noises are made. “Hey,” it noises. “Lets give you a name.”

 

* * *

 

 **iii. Four of Pentacles**  
He does not know where he is. He does not know what he is. He knows what he needs, though, and it is not the blood offered to him, or the protection from sunlight the others seek. It is something that has been blocked out of his mind, even as he seeks it.

He hungers though. He hungers so much, for blood, for darkness, _for his sister_ something whispers in the recesses of his mind.

He licks his lips, his new-sharp teeth. Maybe her blood would sate him.

 

* * *

 

 **iv. Six of Pentacles**  
“You made another? Now?” 

He has a name, now, Vision, and he watches the man that made him and his friend debate before him.

“Of course! Ultron was a mistake, there was no way he could ever be right, the fumbling attempts of an apprentice’s hands. Vision is _perfect.”_

His maker, he knows now, is Tony Stark, genius young doctor and engineer, the man who built him out of flesh and metal. His friend is Bruce - _Doctor Banner_ - a skilled as Doctor as his friend but more of flesh and the science of the mysteries of air and aether than his maker. 

He curls and uncurls his hand, feels the metal joints roll and curve beneath reddened skin - _It will fade, Vision, it’s just to keep it strong at first for the mechanics_  - he can almost feel the cogs of his heart.

“Sir,” he says softly. “I do not know this Ultron. I do not know why he was a mistake. I also do not know you, and please, do not threaten my father.”

He does not quite understand that slip, that made _maker_  into _father_  but it fits and it works and it makes a smile spread across Doctor Banner’s face even as Tony Stark’s is marked with shock.

Then the doorbell rings.

 

* * *

 

 **v. Hermit**  
There are strangers gathered at the door and Natasha watches them all, where she hovers invisible, nothing but a ghost. There is a woman, and a man with a cane that she is certain hides a crossbow, and a man with a hammer and wild hair for all his neat form. Stepping out of the light of the streets and to the light of the door is another - a man she recognises from when she died.

“Hello,” says the man with the crossbow. “I am Mr. Barton. This is my niece, Miss Wanda Maximoff, and my friends, Mr. Thor Odinson and Mr. Steve Rogers. We’d appreciate your help.”

Natasha almost laughs at the looks on Banner and Stark’s faces but then, she supposes, they are physical with physical consequences while she is not.

Wanda Maximoff lifts a gloved hand from her own cane, palm towards the spot where Natasha watches. 

“Uncle,” she says, voice soft and raw with grief. “There is a third here.” Fingers clench in, stretch out. “Reveal yourself,” she says, and Natasha is pulled into the open.

She tastes air on her tongue and realises that she is almost alive.

 

* * *

 

 **vi. Page of Swords**  
“We need your help,” he says to those gathered around. There’s a sound from upstairs, and by the ways Doctors’ Stark and Banner’s eyes flick upwards it is something which concerns them. “Since my niece and her brother were orphaned they have stayed with my wife and I. Wanda is, as you may have noticed, gifted. Someone, gifted in their own way, has stolen her brother from us.”

“My twin,” Wanda says. “Pietro.” She and Clint share a glance. _The one who anchors her magic._  “We would seek your help, your skills. Mr. Rogers is... older than he looks and with some experience in this field. Mr. Odinson too has experience in this field and has extraordinary fighting abilities. What we would seek of you two, Doctors, is your medical knowledge. We wish to know if what was done to my brother can be reversed.”

It is Natasha - new formed, still almost intangible - who speaks. “Reversed from what?”

 

* * *

 

 **vii. Page of Swords**  
Wanda’s voice is cool and cold as she speaks of what they believe was done to her brother. His own voice is steady but worried.

“Vampires,” Natasha says. “One is what put me into my current state.”

 _“Phantasma,”_ Wanda says. “Leeching life from life.”

“Whatever this one is,” Mr. Rogers says, “It is not yet as powerful as the one I put down.”

Something like recognition flickers across Natasha’s face.

“Undead!” Doctor Stark laughs. “There is no such thing.”

“Tony,” his companion says. “We should-”

Natasha smiles, as vicious as a cat, “Tell them about the boy in the attic?”

 

* * *

 

 **viii. Hermit**  
She leads them upstairs. It is odd to be in a body again, but this doesn’t feel quite real, is still somewhat intangible. If she doesn’t focus her hand goes straight through the banister.

“He is in here,” she says. “Doctor Stark’s Vision.”

The door opens to a scene of chaos.

 

* * *

 

 **ix. Six of Pentacles**  
“Vision!” calls Tony to where his new creation is struggling against the elder. 

“Tony!” calls Bruce. his skin is rippling, greening, hulking out into the vast form of _it_.

Behind them the visitors are raising weapons - Rogers and Odinson both have their fists, but Barton has some concealed crossbow in his cane and Miss Maximoff is lifting hands daubed in a red like blood. Natasha is reaching for something hidden behind her back.

Then it ploughs into Ultron. Tony’s elder creation tries to fight back but he is nothing against the other man that hides within Bruce’s skin. Bruce’s strength is in intelligence, but _this,_  this side of him is pure rage and physicality and for all Ultron’s undead might even he struggles against it.

 _“Vision!”_  calls Tony and his newest creation pulls himself up, runs in stumbles over to his father.

The thing that had been Bruce snarls and yells, the mechanics in Ultron’s shoulder complain, as they hear cloth tearing. Ultron’s fist lands a perfect blow on its face, and it spits out a broken tooth.

“Remember me?” it asks Ultron.

 _“Monster,”_ Ultron snarls.

It laughs, and throws Ultron from the window.

 

* * *

 

 **x. Four of Pentacles**  
He is close he knows it. He can smell her, smell her blood and feel her pulse and the pulses of those around her. But hers is sweetest and loudest and he crawls along the roof as something is thrown from the window.

A person. It’s blood smells dead, it’s heart ticks like a clock.

He climbs down to the window, smells her blood like wine and flowers, and looks in.

 

* * *

 

 **xi. Queen of Cups**  
“Father,” Vision says, pointing to the window. It is shrinking back to Bruce, trembling and shaking as his bones warp back down to size. 

“What was that?” Rogers asks.

“What are _you?”_  asks Odinson.

“Father,” Vision says. 

The strangled scream Wanda gives tells them all they need to know.

 

* * *

 

 **xii.**   **Justice**  
Pietro. It is Pietro but bent and warped and pale, head twisting like an owls as he clambers down from the window. for a moment he had looked decapitated, his head upside-down, hanging like that but she can see now that there is no such hope of peace for her brother, he is walking towards them like some jerking puppet.

He hisses,  _“Sister,”_ his eyes fixed on her and Wanda reaches for her magic.

Wanda reaches for her magic and it _isn’t there._  The bond has weakened without her brother but it has still been there and now, now he is so close to returned to them it has left her entirely.

“Pietro,” she says. “Do you remember me?”

His head tilts in a jerk. “Sister,” he says and she might almost smile and reach for him.

_“Give me your blood.”_

 

* * *

 

 **xiii. Ace of Swords**  
Rogers ploughs into Pietro, tries to pin him to the wall. Hands claw at him, drawing blood like claws but he does not flinch, does not flinch even once. “Natasha!” he calls. “Please!”

She rushes forwards, passing through objects like the ghost she is, passing him something almost tangible, a stake of wood.

Pietro screeches as the wood drives through his wrist and into the brick behind him.

“What is he?!” Stark calls.

“A vampire,” Barton says, levelling his crossbow. “Wanda, you know-”

“Do it,” she says.

The thing that was Pietro screeches again as his other wrist is pinned by a crossbow quarrel.

He strains against them, pushing himself from the wall by his feet and Wanda draws nearer. Scarlet sparks and sputters around her hands but none of the strength it once held, even as she nears her brother. “Pietro,” she whispers. _“Please.”_

Behind them, Banner pulls himself to his feet. “You said he was given bad blood to turn him, didn’t you,” he says, soft and quiet and audible even over Pietro’s screeches, barely a question. “So we give him clean. Vision?”

The new-made person steps forward from his father’s side. 

“You’re as strong as your brother, aren’t you?”

Tony’s hand is gentle on his creation’s shoulder. “Stronger.”

Bruce nods, looks to Natasha and Rogers, tow with so clear a history of fighting these beasts. “We drain him of tainted blood and give him clean.”

 

* * *

 

 **xiv. Ace of Swords**  
Wanda sits by her brother’s side. Vision sat firmly atop him, hands pinning ankles while a fresh stake and quarrel pin his wrists. Blood drips from one wrist into a bucket, pulses down one tube to a wrist.

“We don’t know that this will work,” Rogers says. “This was never attempted when I fought them.”

“Mine tried it,” Natasha says. “It did not always work.”

“It can kill sometimes,” Bruce admits. “Even in humans.”

Wanda looks to them, faint sparks of scarlet in her gaze. “Better this than nothing,” she whispers.

They watch her brother fade away on the table, and hope he will return.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> The _Ace of Swords_ can mean triumph and prosperity, but it can also mean misery.
> 
> Please leave comments!


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